Harry Reid and Causality

It's understandable that Harry Reid wants to protect the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. After all, he doesn't quite understand the causal relationships involved here:

"The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist." (Politico)

The Republicans want to end the existence of tens of thousands of people! That's like half the population of northern Nevada. And those callous Tea Partiers don't even care if those good folks exist.

On the other hand, if one's raison d'etre is a cowboy poetry festival, maybe nonexistence is a consummation devoutly to be wished. At Global Review, we simply wish that Senator Harry Reid did not exist.